Create/Modify a Virtual Host and Reload Apache from Inside Rails App - ruby-on-rails

My application is a set of two rails applications. Based on some parameters in first app. I need to setup the virtual host of the second app. I just need to change the ServerName and ServerAlias in apache VH and enable the site using a2ensite and then 'apache2 reload '.
How can I do this from within a rails application?
Thanks,
Imran

First of all: be aware that enabling web-apps to change the server configuration is a security risk.
# First, open the config file
fd=File.open('/etc/apache2/sites/yoursite', 'r+')
# read in the contents
content=fd.read
# now replace the ServerName and ServerAlias lines with your new setting
if content.gsub!(/ServerName(.*)/,"ServerName NewServerName") and content.gsub!(/ServerAlias(.*)/,"ServerAlias NewServerAlias")
fd.rewind
puts "\tsaving file"
fd.write content
end
fd.close
I did not test neither code nor the regular expressions, please load the relevant parts of your config file into rubular.com and roll your own regex.
Maybe you should also make a backup before saving using
File.copy(file,file+".bak",true)

Related

Wamp server 2.5 wrong page redirection

I installed wamp server 2.5 with PHP 5.5. Now, when i try to access my project pages from the front page(wamp home page), it redirect to a wrong url and shows google cannot find this page.
The problem definition is
I enter to wamp using http://localhost
There I have many project. Suppose I click on sample_project
Then the page redirects to sample_projects/
And Google Chrome displays the error chrome cannot find this webpage
There are two fields are swown red marks in my wamp PHP extensions area. They are php_enchant and php_opcache
What is the problem with my wamp??am I missing something? Help please
Honestly I think its highly inefficient to create Virtual Host for every.. single.. project. So after investigating I found a key variable in:
wamp/www/index.php.
After quick analysis, the variable's obvious purpose is to remove the 'localhost' in projects links.
Change this line:
$suppress_localhost = true;
To this:
$suppress_localhost = false;
WAMPServer 2.5 Homepage the Your Projects Menu and Virtual Hosts
There has been a change of concept in WampServer 2.5 and there is a good reason for this change!
In WampServer 2.5 it is now STRONGLY encouraged to create a Virtual Host for each of your projects, even if you hold then in a \wamp\www\subfolder structure.
Virtual Hosts Documentation
Virtual Host Examples
The WampServer home page ( \wamp\www\index.php ) now expects you to have created a Virtual Host for all your projects and will therefore work properly only if you do so.
History
In order to make life easier for beginners using WampServer to learn PHP Apache and MySQL it was suggested that you create subfolders under the \wamp\www\ folder.
wamp
|-- www
|-- Chapter1
|-- Chapter2
|-- etc
These subfolders would then show as links in the WampServer Homepage under a menu called 'Your Projects' and these links would contain a link to localhost/subfoldername.
Acceptable only for simple tutorials
This made life easy for the complete beginner, and was perfectly acceptable for example for those following tutorials to learn PHP coding.
However it was never intended for use when developing a real web site that you would later want to copy to your live hosted server.
In fact if you did use this mechanism it often caused problems as the live sites configuration would not match your development configuration.
The Problem for real website development.
The reason for this is of course that the default DocumentRoot setting for wamp is
DocumentRoot "c:/wamp/www/"
regardless of what your subfolder was called.
This ment that often used PHP code that queried the structure or your site received different information when running on your development WampServer to what it would receive when running on a live hosted server, where the DocumentRoot configuration points to the folder at the top of the website file hierarchy.
This kind of code exists in many frameworks and CMS's for example WordPress and Joomla etc.
For Example
Lets say we have a project called project1 held in wamp\www\project1 and run incorrectly as localhost/project1/index.php
This is what would be reported by some of the PHP command in question:
$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = localhost
$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] = localhost
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = c:/wamp/www
Now if we had correctly defined that site using a Virtual Host definition and ran it as http://project1 the results on the WAMPServer devlopment site will match those received when on a live hosted environment.
$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = project1
$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] = project1
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = c:/wamp/www/project1
Now this difference may seem trivial at first but if you were to use a framework like WordPress or one of the CMS's like Joomla for example, this can and does cause problems when you move your site to a live server.
How to create a Virtual Host in WampServer
Actually this should work basically the same for any wndows Apache server, with differences only in where you may find the Apache config files.
There are 3 steps to create your first Virtual Host in Apache, and only 2 if you already have one defined.
Create the Virtual Host definition(s)
Add your new domain name to the HOSTS file.
Uncomment the line in httpd.conf that includes the Virtual Hosts definition file.
Step 1, Create the Virtual Host definition(s)
Edit the file called httpd-hosts.conf which for WampServer lives in
\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\conf\extra\httpd-hosts.conf
(Apache version numbers may differ, engage brain before continuing)
If this is the first time you edit this file, remove the default example code, it is of no use.
I am assuming we want to create a definition for a site called project1 that lives in
\wamp\www\project1
Very important, first we must make sure that localhost still works so that is the first VHOST definition we will put in this file.
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "c:/wamp/www"
ServerName localhost
ServerAlias localhost
<Directory "c:/wamp/www">
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Now we define our project: and this of course you do for each of your projects as you start a new one.
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "c:/wamp/www/project1"
ServerName project1
<Directory "c:/wamp/www/project1">
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
NOTE: That each Virtual Host as its own DocumentRoot defined. There are also many other parameters you can add to a Virtual Hosts definition, check the Apache documentation.
Small aside
The way virtual hosts work in Apache: The first definition in this file will also be the default site, so should the domain name used in the browser not match any actually defined virtually hosted domain, making localhost the first domain in the file will therefore make it the site that is loaded if a hack attempt just uses your IP Address.
So if we ensure that the Apache security for this domain is ALWAYS SET TO
Require local
any casual hack from an external address will receive an error and not get into your PC, but should you misspell a domain you will be shown the WampServer homepage, because you are on the same PC as WampServer and therfore local.
Setp 2:
Add your new domain name to the HOSTS file.
Now we need to add the domain name that we have used in the Virtual Host definition to the HOSTS file so that windows knows where to find it. This is similiar to creating a DNS A record, but it is only visible in this case on this specific PC.
Edit C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
The file has no extension and should remain that way. Watch out for notepad, as it may try and add a .txt extension if you have no better editor.
I suggest you download Notepad++, its free and a very good editor.
Also this is a protected file so you must edit it with administrator privileges, so launch you editor using the Run as Administrator menu option.
The hosts file should look like this when you have completed these edits
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 project1
::1 localhost
::1 project1
Note that you should have definitions in here for the IPV4 loopback address 127.0.0.1 and also the IPV6 loopback address ::1 as Apache is now IPV6 aware and the browser will use either IPV4 or IPV6 or both. I have no idea how it decides which to use, but it can use either if you have the IPV6 stack turned on, and most window OS's do as of XP SP3.
Now we must tell windows to refresh its domain name cache, so launch a command window again using the Run as Administrator menu option again, and do the following.
net stop dnscache
net start dnscache
This forces windows to clear its domain name cache and reload it, in reloading it will re-read the HOSTS file so now it knows about the domain project1.
Step 3: Uncomment the line in httpd.conf that includes the Virtual Hosts definition file.
Edit your httpd.conf, use the wampmanager.exe menus to make sure you edit the correct file.
Find this line in httpd.conf
# Virtual hosts
#Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
And just remove the # to uncomment that line.
To activate this change in you running Apache we must now stop and restart the Apache service.
wampmanager.exe -> Apache -> Service -> Restart Service
Now if the WAMP icon in the system tray does not go GREEN again, it means you have probably done something wrong in the \wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\conf\extra\httpd-hosts.conf file.
If so here is a useful mechanism to find out what is wrong. It uses a feature of the Apache exe (httpd.exe) to check its config files and report errors by filename and line numbers.
Launch a command window.
cd \wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\bin
httpd -t
So fix the errors and retest again until you get the output
Syntax OK
Now there is one more thing.
There are actually 2 new menu items on the wampmanager menu system. One called [b]'My Projects'[/b] which is turned on by default.
And a second one, called [b]'My Virtual Hosts'[/b], which is not activated by default.
'My Projects' will list any sub directory of the \wamp\www directory and provide a link to launch the site in that sub directory.
As I said earlier, it launches 'project1` and not 'localhost/project1' so to make the link work we must create a Virtual Host definition to make this link actually launch that site in your browser, without the Virtual Host definition it's likely to launch a web search for the site name as a keyword or just return a site not found condition.
The 'My Virtual Hosts' menu item is a little different. It searches the file that is used to define Virtual Hosts ( we will get to that in a minute ) and creates menu links for each ServerName parameter it finds and creates a menu item for each one.
This may seem a little confusing as once we create a Virtual Host definition for the sub directories of the \wamp\www folder some items will appear on both of the 'My Projects' menu and the 'My Virtual Hosts' menu's.
How do I turn this other 'My Virtual Hosts' menu on?
Make a backup of the \wamp\wampmanager.tpl file, just in case you make a mistake, its a very important file.
Edit the \wamp\wampmanager.tpl
Find this parameter ;WAMPPROJECTSUBMENU, its in the '[Menu.Left]' section.
Add this new parameter ;WAMPVHOSTSUBMENU either before or after the ;WAMPPROJECTSUBMENU parameter.
Save the file.
Now right click the wampmanager icon, and select 'Refresh'. If this does not add the menu, 'exit' and restart wampmanager.
Big Note
The new menu will only appear if you already have some Virtual Hosts defined! Otherwise you will see no difference until you define a VHOST.
I can't believe that Wampserver now expects everyone to create a virtual host for every project under development offline on their laptops?
Your instructions seem to be very good but probably much too complicated for beginners (also, I suspect that the file path in your instructions for step2: adding the new domain to the HOSTS file only applies to 32-bit Windows)?
The solution from Rogue above (change $suppress_localhost="true"; to $suppress_localhost="false"; in c:/wamp/www/index.php) will work perfectly for 99% of the users who develop more than one website on their laptops.
Also uploading a completed website to an online server should not cause any real problems.
BUt perhaps Wampserver had another reason for adding the $suppress_localhost code?

How to use geminabox with Apache web server

I want to use geminabox with Apache web server. I have searched a lot on web but could not find any concrete information. Can some one please let me know how to do this ? Will appreciate detailed suggestions.
An easy way to use Geminabox with Apache is to configure a HTTP Reverse Proxy.
For this configuration, you just need two files:
1) The config.ru just like the example in the README.md file in the geminabox repository:
require "rubygems"
require "geminabox"
Geminabox.data = "include here the data path"
run Geminabox::Server
To run the server use rackup command. This will start the server in the 9292 port. If you want to change the port number use rackup -p XXXX.
2) In the Apache side, make sure that you have the mod_proxy and the mod_proxy_http installed. If yes, just include the following lines into your Apache config file:
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPass / http://localhost:9292/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:9292/
Restart the Apache and it is done!
geminabox is a ruby application, and just like all ruby applications, Apache does not support them out of the box.
With that said, a simple Google of how to use ruby applications with Apache lead me to this, which lead me to this. I have no experience with this tool. However, it is suggested by the rails team, so it has to have some merit.
I did work with Apache VirtualHost.
In folder /etc/httpd/conf.d/ create a file gems.conf, so add it to the file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName gems.mydomain
ServerAlias gems.local
DocumentRoot /var/railsapps/gems/public
</VirtualHost>
Where /var/railsapps/gems is the folder that have the config.ru.
The domain gems.mydomain must be in your DNS or /etc/hosts

jRuby deployment into a subfolder in Tomcat

While developing a jRuby application using webbrick as the webserver, all my code is written with http://localhost:3000 as the root.
When deploying to Tomcat, I create a WAR file and it creates a subfolder under the webapps/ folder: localhost:8080/project_name/
This causes a load of problems with my code. Is there anything I can do in my ruby routes.rb file to deal with this?
Should I resort to using some sort of virtual host in Tomcat?
Although this question is quite old, we ran into a similar problem with a current project of ours. The project is done with JRuby on Rails, using Tomcat 6.x (7.0.26 in development for testing purposes), needing multiple deployments of the same application on the same servlet container, having individual server names. It took me quite some time to find a good enough solution and I like to share it with you.
Continue reading, if root context is no option for you (as cosmikduster described it above). If it is, use it.
TL;DR
Use virtual hosts for each app provided by Tomcat to give yourself root context for individual apps deployed on the Tomcat servlet container. The explanation provided below is based on this and is just an illustrative example with a step by step solution attached.
The problem
The problem arises when deploying a *.war file to Tomcat, as per default, the deployed app, let's call it awesome_app_uno for now, will live under http://localhost:8080/awesome_app_uno. This is all fine and dandy but can cause problems with the internal path generation of rails, which by default will now use /awesome_app_uno for every path generated.
Explanation & initial setup
Now, JRuby Rack, which is the rack implementation for JRuby is kind enough to include a feature that automatically sets the relative_url_root for you, I quote from the README:
The Rails controller setting ActionController::Base.relative_url_root is set for you automatically according to the context root where your webapp is deployed.
Normally, I would cheer - but in the real world, we'd probably do not want something like this, as we'll have something like a proxy to get ourselves some nice domainname, e.g.
http://awesomeappuno.com/
And now we're screwed. If we take a naive solution for this, we'd probably end up using an Apache (or an nginx, whatever you like) to function as a proxy. We'll want something like
http://awesomeappuno.com/ -> http://localhost:8080/awesome_app_uno
Just for the fun of it, lets look at the configuration for an apache config file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName awesomeappuno.com
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/awesomeappuno_error.log
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/awesomeappuno_access.log combined
<Proxy *>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyRequests off
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/awesome_app_uno
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/awesome_app_uno
</VirtualHost>
Kindly stolen from here.
The madness
With that being your configuration, you can now visit http://awesomeappuno.com.
This is where you'll notice, that despite now having a clean root without prefixes, Rails will still generate paths with the /aweseome_app_uno prefix, i.e.
http://awesomeappuno.com/awesome_app_uno/the/path/you/wanted
This is generally undesirable. While some of you could propably live with this, I couldn't. Moreover, there's awesome_app_dos coming up on the horizon which needs to be deployed on the same Tomcat instance, needing it's own domain name http://awesomeappdos.com, along with the two ugly cousins awesome_staging and awesome_integration behind it. The gist is, if you're forced to use the same Tomcat container for all these apps, giving on app root context is not really an option.
You can try some solutions like writing custom initializers, resetting the ENV hash, which gets initially filled by the jruby-rack (see comments and answers above). You might find yourself rewriting the paths manually or using absolute urls. Or you create hacks for a single environment. Or you could try to use rewrites. Or mod_subsitute. You could even try using multiple tomcat instances running everything under root context.
Don't do that.
Please.
Virtual Hosts to the rescue
While reading up on the issue (and trying everything described in the last paragraph), I stumpled on an entry in the ruby forum.
You can create virtual hosts with Tomcat, providing a root context for each app. To get more in depth knowledge, you can start here or here. In short, suppose your Tomcat (7.x) is located under /usr/local/tomcat, this would be the quick and dirty version:
Create a virtual host
The host will have it's appBase within the tomcat installation for this. If this isn't your stale, change it.
(cd /usr/local/tomcat/libexec)
I am using an installation via homebrew here, I am on a mac under OSX 10.7.4 - however with slight alterations this should work on a standard Debian as well.
Open up conf/server.xml and within the engine tag create another host:
<Host name="awesome_app_uno" alias="awesomeappuno" appBase="awesome_app/uno" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true" xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
<Context path="" docBase="ROOT"></Context>
</Host>
After that, create a file called conf/Catalina/awesome_app_uno/ROOT.xml. These are the contents:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Context docBase="${catalina.base}/awesome_app/uno/ROOT.war">
</Context>
Afterwards, place the awesomeappuno.war as /usr/local/tomcat/libexec/awesome_app/uno/ROOT.war and restart Tomcat. You can check the virtual host via http://localhost:8080/host-manager/html.
You should be able to visit http://awesome_app_uno:8080 and find your app there. Paths should now be correct, however, port 8080 isn't that user friendly. With slight changes to the previously shown apache config, we can also get a nice name for this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName awesomeappuno.com
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/awesomeappuno_error.log
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/awesomeappuno_access.log combined
<Proxy *>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyRequests off
ProxyPass / http://awesome_app_uno:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://awesome_app_uno:8080/
</VirtualHost>
Reload your apache and you should now have no further problems with pathing, routing, because everything now happens under the root context of the tomcat virtual host.
Rinse and repeat for additional apps on the same tomcat instance.
The end
Hope i could help you with this.
lg,
flo
There is code in JRuby-Rack to deal with this. Depending on the version of Tomcat and/or Rails, it may not be detecting the extra context path correctly.
The environment variable that is supposed to take effect is called ENV['RAILS_RELATIVE_URL_ROOT']. You might print out the value of that expression during boot time and see whether it's getting set when you run in Tomcat.
The code in question is here:
https://github.com/nicksieger/jruby-rack/blob/master/src/main/ruby/jruby/rack/rails.rb#L32-38
The versions of Tomcat, Rails and JRuby-Rack you're using would help diagnose the problem further.
Your app should almost never care about the host/domain/port it will run under. To deploy at the relative path /, instead of /myapp, simply rename the WAR to ROOT.war instead of myapp.war when you copy it to the tomcat/webapps folder.

Ruby on Rails app in root directory?

Hey guys, new to rails, but I have found out how to create an app now through the shell but to create an app using rails appname would give me a url of http://url.com/appname/ but I want my app, to be within the route if you understand me, so it's just http://url.com/login/ or /signup or /play so on?
So does anyone have any ideas how to do this, or why you can't or I shouldn't? Anything really, thanks guys!
if you use passenger and apache, firstly in your apache conf file
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName myapp.local
DocumentRoot "/home/davit/myapp/public"
</VirtualHost>
DocumentRoot should be point to your app' s public folder.
And in public folder create a .htaccess file and write this:
PassengerEnabled on
RailsEnv development
Rails application is stored in some directory like appname but it doesn't appear in url path. In general you should configure your server (Apache, nginx, ...) to point to public folder in rails application. The only thing to do is to configure your server properly.
It depends on your hosting provider, with dreamhost, which I use, its part of the tools they provide to configure where do I want the application to be.
If you have to configure things yourself, you can still write your alias configuration or whatever your server uses to map to your rails application public/ folder.

Do I need to modify httpd.conf to get symfony to wor

Can someone tell me is it necessary to modify httpd.conf to get symfony to work? I am following a tutorial which says I need to edit httpd.conf file but my provider does not give me access to that file.
from tutrial: http://www.symfony-project.org/cookbook/1_2/en/web_server
Alias
If you already have a website on a
domain name, and if you wish that your
symfony application can be accessed
within this domain, then the virtual
host solution cannot work. For
instance, let's assume that you want
to access our symfony application
with:
To do that, open the httpd.conf and
add the following lines:
Alias /myapp/
Alias /myapp/ /home/steve/myproject/web/
<Directory "/home/steve/myproject/web">
AllowOverride All
Allow from All
</Directory>
You can install symfony without access to http.conf. If your provider lets you choose the directory of the web root, choose yourapp/web directory. If the root directory is fixed, then make it a link to yourapp/web . If you want to have access to the images of the development bar (that normaly is not needed in production), then place a link in web/sf to lib/vendor/symfony/data/web/sf.

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